There are increasing applications that require high quality radar satellite imaging. However, obtaining high quality radar satellite images typically requires a large antenna aperture, which is generally a function of antenna size. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is a side-looking system that is able to utilize a small physical aperture to simulate a larger synthetic aperture by moving the radar along a flight path while emitting pulses. The reflections of the pulses are digitally processed and combined to generate image data. Synthetic aperture radar also has the capability to perform imaging at night and through clouds since it does not require solar illumination. However, current synthetic aperture radar technology has shortcomings that limit its applicability. For example, currently, large and costly phased array radars are used as synthetic aperture radar payloads on satellites for Earth observation because of their operational mode flexibility. Generally, there is a cost to image quality tradeoff that occurs. Cost and image quality are both functions of the technological design of the satellite, among other factors. Many potential applications of synthetic aperture radar technology have not been possible due to the cost to image quality constraints of the state of the art.